Beware Of Some Charter Changes

May 28, 1992

If it ain't broke, fix it.

That seems to be one premise of the Hartford Charter Revision Commission, whose recommendations are being submitted to the City Council.

Hartford is not a perfectly run city. Compared with all the other major urban centers in Connecticut, however, Hartford stands out as the one with the most fiscal integrity and most competent management. Bridgeport, Waterbury, New Haven, New Britain and Danbury have strong mayors who are in charge of most aspects of governance. In Hartford, the city manager is given leeway to exercise professional judgment in how best to administer government.

Obviously, there can be no complete insulation of management from politics, but maintaining a degree or two of separation between policy-makers and implementers is healthy. Often, that separation makes a big difference in hiring experts or hacks to run a complex organization.

Advocates of the strong-mayor form of government complain there is no accountability in the present system. But there is. The person who wins the support of a majority on the City Council is in charge. Whether that leader is called mayor, deputy mayor or majority leader, he or she is accountable. When voters become unhappy with the majority, they throw it out -- as they have done on several occasions in recent years.

Let there be no mistake about who is accountable at City Hall today. Mayor Carrie Saxon Perry is. She has the support of her own Democratic slate as well as the People for Change party. Not only does she have veto power on budget matters, but she is designated by the charter as the city's policy leader with authority to appoint various commissions and task forces.

It would be a mistake to give any mayor in Hartford the absolute power of directly appointing virtually all key players in city administration, including the corporation counsel. That's what the charter commission is proposing, however.

Voters, who will have the ultimate say in November, should not be swayed by rhetoric on accountability. The strong-mayor proposal would concentrate too much power in one person. It abuses the principle of checks and balances.

A sensible proposal left out of the commission's

recommendations was to extend council terms to four years. Two-year tenures give the council and the mayor little breathing room from one election to the next. Four-year terms would help create a more stable governing environment.

Two major recommendations by the commission deserve support.

City Hall should be required to draw a code of ethics and form an ethics commission.

A separate planning and zoning commission should be established, rather than continuing with the City Council's acting as the zoning agency.

A third recommendation has popular support, but is no panacea. The commission supported expanding the City Council to 11 members and divide the city into wards or districts. Eight seats would be apportioned by district and the remaining three would represent the city at large. Does Hartford, a small city, really need to be subdivided into wards? Wouldn't that further encourage pork-barrel politics? Expanding the council and dividing the city into wards wouldn't be disastrous, although it's hard to see what those changes would fix. If Hartford has a governance problem, it doesn't lie in the size or at-large composition of the council. Neither does it lie in the fact the city is managed by a professional hired and fired by the council instead of the mayor.

Hartford's problems are fundamentally economic and sociological. Let's not blame our ills on the charter or raise expectations that there will be strong and enlightened leadership at City Hall if only the charter were amended.

When the City Council prepares for the November referendum, it should avoid limiting the choice to an up or down vote on the entire package. Better to have the major questions broken down into separate parts. Voters should be given the opportunity to consider each amendment on its own merits